Italian Pastoral Opera and Pastoral Politics in England, 1705-1712

IT is my Design in this Paper to deliver down to Posterity a faithful Account of the Italian Opera, and of the gradual Progress which it has made upon the English Stage: For there is no Question but our great Grand-children will be very curious to know the Reason why their Fore-fathers used to sit together like an Audience of Foreigners in their own Country, and to hear whole Plays acted before them in a Tongue which they did not understand.¹ (Joseph Addison, Spectator 18, March 21, 1711)

These words, written by Joseph Addison and published in the Spectator on March 21st 1711, are representative of the general resistance and outright hostility Italian opera met with in London in the early eighteenth century. According to published criticisms, Italian operas were having a variety of detrimental effects on English minds and culture. That some of these operas were pastoral added insult to injury. Richard Steele, co-author of the Spectator and an outspoken critic equally well known for his disdain of Italian opera, specifically mocked Italian pastoral opera in a satirical advertisement in the Tatler on March 9th, 1710, promoting farcical pastoral adventures for all who “delight in soft lines.”² While attacking Italian opera is quite in character for Steele, spoofing the pastoral genre is not. Steele and his colleague Addison were actually strong advocates of pastoral literature – or at least of English pastoral literature. Addison and Steele endorsed in their publications, the Tatler, Spectator and Guardian, the pastoral poems of their contemporary and crony, Ambrose Philips. In light of Addison and Steele’s general appreciation for the English pastoral genre, this paper explores the previously overlooked issue of how the Addisonian’s perceived Italian pastoral operas through a discussion of the larger Italian opera debate in context with the social and political motivations behind English pastorals.

The numerous criticisms that appeared in the Tatler, Spectator and Guardian newspapers against Italian opera have been frequently quoted and discussed in modern scholarship.³ The most common denigration of Italian opera was that it was irrational and injured common sense. In Spectator 5, Addison mocks the absurdity of having “Nicolini exposed to a Tempest in Robes of Ermin, and sailing in an open Boat upon a Sea of Paste-Board;” and further ridicules the nonsensical plots and poor literary quality of the librettos.⁴ Addison also derides the poor quality of Italian opera librettos in Spectator 18, saying “That nothing is capable of being well set to Musick, that is not Nonsense.”⁵ Other irrational features Steele and Addison mocked included the fact that some singers sing in Italian, while others sing in English:

That the understanding [of the opera] has no part in the pleasures is evident, from what these letters very positively assert, to wit, that a great part of the performance was done in Italian: and a great critic fell into fits in the gallery, at feeling, not only time and place, but languages and nations confused in the most incorrigible manner. His spleen is so extremely moved on this occasion, that he is going to publish a treatise against operas, which, he thinks, have already inclined us to thoughts of peace, and if tolerated, must infallibly dispirit us from carrying on the war.⁶

Moreover, the poor literary quality of the Italian opera librettos was thought to be ruining the English poetic tradition. As John Dennis states in his Essay on Operas:

But that so many People of great Quality, and of greater Parts, Lovers of their Country, and Encouragers of Art, and of Poetry more particularly, should prove so zealous in the encouraging and promoting Entertainments, which tend so directly to the Detriment of the Publick, to the Detriment of Arts, and especially of expiring Poetry; Entertainments which are so directly contrary to their Nobler Pleasures, and their real Interests, can proceed from nothing but from that Weight of Affairs which oppresses them, and deprives them of time and leisure to consider deliberately of these things.⁷

Dennis’s criticism of the upper class for their apparently misguided zeal for Italian opera and its detrimental effects on English culture and “especially English poetry,” exemplifies the second most common criticism against Italian opera: it was supported and maintained by an elite with corrupted taste. Addison seconds this opinion in Spectator 18: “It does not want any great Measure of Sense to see the Ridicule of this monstrous Practice;” Addison begins, “but what makes it the more astonishing, it is not the Taste of the Rabble, but of Persons of the greatest Politeness, which has establish'd it.”⁸

Aside from Richard Steele’s satirical advertisement mocking Italian pastoral opera in the Tatler, more deprecating remarks about Italian pastoral operas occur in the anonymous 1709 publication, A Critical Discourse upon Opera’s in England. If one believes the author, the Italian pastoral operas were all of exceptionally poor quality and unmitigated disasters. The first Italian pastoral ever performed on an English stage, gli amori di Ergasto,

. . . prov'd fatal to that Theatre, and so indeed have all the rest, for none of 'em ever Took; so that the Undertakers of the Opera ought to tremble at the very Name of Pastoral as will more plainly appear from what follows.
This Pastoral was succeeded by another, Compos'd by Sa--ni [Saggione], a Venetian, and call'd the Temple of Love; which, either for that the Author cou'd do no better, or because he had Entertain'd so mean an Opinion of the English Nation, as to think any thing well-design'd, and finish'd, was above their Taste; whatever the Reason of it was, the Composition was so poor and trivial . . . that probably it might have pass'd Muster in the Indies, or some other barbarous Countries where Musick was hardly ever heard of, but 'twas impossible it shou'd take in London, where nothing but what is Excellent in its kind, is secure of Applause.⁹
[…]
The Winter following, a Pastoral call'd the Triumph of Love was Perform'd in the Theatre in the Hay-Market; and certainly if small Villages are render'd Famous in History by the loss of some Battels Fought near 'em, the Triumph of Love will grow Notorious in Gradis Musicati, for the Desolation it brought upon that Theatre, which was so great that the then Undertaker was constrain'd to abandon Opera's, foreseeing that a Triumph of Love, or two more, wou'd of Necessity undo him.¹⁰

The author states that all three of these pastoral operas, gli amori di Ergasto (1705), The Temple of Love (1706), and Love’s Triumph (1708) were failures. But if one looks at the total number of nights each opera was performed in its debut season, only the Temple of Love – with two performances – was a complete failure. Gli amori di Ergasto ran for seven nights, and Love’s Triumph ran for eight. By comparison, the most successful opera of the decade, Camilla, which totaled 65 performances between 1705 and 1712, had an opening run of only 10 nights. Clearly, the author’s disgust with Italian pastoral opera caused him to exaggerate his case. Another prevarication by the author is that the “Undertaker was constrain’d to abandon Opera’s” after Love’s Triumph. No such thing occurred; in fact, the opposite is true. A union between the Drury Lane and Queen’s Theatre houses for the 1707-1708 season required that the Queen’s theatre, in which Love’s Triumph opened on 26 February, 1708, produce only operas, which it did.

While the anonymous author of A Critical Discourse has an excellent chronological knowledge of the operas performed during this time, his attempts to undermine Italian pastoral opera are weakened through these exaggerations. Nonetheless, his credibility is partially restored by his argument – which corresponds with the more credible authors, John Dennis, Richard Steele, and Joseph Addison – that the librettos of these Italian pastoral operas were of poor literary quality. This is a common argument presented against operas throughout operatic history, and indeed, if one reads these three pastoral librettos as strictly literary works, they are no exceptions.

On the surface, the accusations against Italian opera were a direct response to its infringement upon English stage traditions. So-called “Rational” English plays were being replaced by works that were, in the eyes of the Addisonians, completely irrational. To their minds, Italian opera was not only a foreign art that was hurting British plays and British poetry, it was promoting the corrupt views of an elite class and some of the nouveau riche – desiring everything foreign over anything English – that were detrimental to British culture as a whole. For these reasons, Italian opera provided an ideal foil for Addison and his friends. The purpose of their criticisms was to ridicule the values of the fashionable elite, admonishing them to promote patriotic over foreign cultural values, and align their views and values with those of the rest of “British” society. Naturally, attacks against Italian pastoral operas had the same goals as the attacks against the rest of the Italian operas. Furthermore, as one infers from the author of A Critical Discourse, Italian pastoral operas were an excellent example of poor-quality literature that could negatively affect the English poetic tradition.

What is interesting here are the disparaging comments about Italian pastoral opera. Numerous issues of the Tatler, Guardian, and Spectator are dedicated to praising and promoting the pastoral genre in general, and, more specifically, the pastoral poetry of their friend and colleague, Ambrose Philips, over the pastoral poems of his rival, Alexander Pope. According to modern and eighteenth-century scholarship, Pope and Philips’ pastorals represent opposite ends of the spectrum.¹¹

The literary pastoral genre was a hotly debated topic in London coffeehouses at this time. An offshoot of the argument over which was better, ancient or modern scholarship, the opposing sides in the debate over pastoral were divided over whether pastoral should include modern English shepherds, set in a modern English environment speaking in a rustic English dialect, in imitation of Theocritus’ Idylls, dubbed the Rationalist theory of pastoral; or whether pastoral should predominantly be in imitation of Virgil’s Eclogues, having elegant shepherds set in a more traditional pastoral environment speaking simply and elegantly, referred to as the Neoclassic theory of pastoral. In this debate, Ambrose Philips’ pastorals represented the Rational pastoral theory, and Alexander Pope’s pastorals were Neoclassical. Both Philips’ and Pope’s pastorals were published together in 1709.

It is easy to understand how promoting Philips’ poems over Pope’s might suit the general mindset of Addison and his colleagues. Philips’ pastorals represent exactly what they would like to see: all things English over all things foreign. Of course, things are never this simple. A closer comparison of Philips’ and Pope’s pastorals reveals that they have almost as many commonalities as they have differences, and certainly Pope’s pastorals cannot be said to promote foreign values and features over native English ones. Where Philips’ shepherds have the English rustic names Cuddy and Colinet, and Pope’s characters have the Italianate names Damon and Daphnis, both sets of nymphs and swains live in an idyllic English landscape. While Philips’ shepherds speak “mummerset”¹² and Pope’s swains use simple and elegant modern English, both poets promote an English pastoral concept within an English seasonal environment, namely winter and death appear prominently in both sets of pastorals. Moreover, Pope’s pastorals, although drawing upon traditional Arcadian imagery, equally promote English pastoral features over traditional Arcadian ones:

Damon: First in these Fields I try the Sylvan Strains, / Nor blush to sport on Windsor's blissful Plains:/ Fair Thames flow gently from thy sacred Spring, / While on thy Banks Sicilian Muses sing;¹³

And

Daphnis: Celestial Venus haunts Idalia's Groves, / Diana Cynthus, Ceres Hybla loves; / If Windsor-Shades delight the matchless Maid, / Cynthus and Hybla yield to Windsor-Shade.¹⁴

In the first example from Pope’s Spring, Sicilian muses sing on the banks of the Thames river, and in the second, Mount Cynthus and Mount Hybla yield to the shades of Windsor Forest (Mount Cynthus, on Delos Island, Greece, is supposedly where Diana was born; and Mount Hybla is in Sicily). Pope implies by this that the English pastoral environment overshadows the traditional Arcadian locale of previous poets, and ancient culture yields to modern – a significant statement for a poet considered to represent classical values. While no doubt Steele and Addison genuinely did admire their friend and colleague Philips’ work, their intentional promoting of Philips’ pastorals over Pope’s was not because Pope’s pastorals were any less “English,” or promoted an English environment, culture, and poetic tradition any less than Philips’ did. Rather, it was an opportunity to put what they considered to be a conceited and scheming young upstart in his place.¹⁵

In the eyes of the Addisonians, Pope, and Philips, the English pastoral tradition surpasses the Italian pastoral tradition and modern Italian pastoral poets. Not only is this attitude evident in the English pastoral poetry itself, as witnessed in Pope’s lines “Cynthus and Hybla yield to Windsor-Shade,” it is also evident in the writings of the Addisonians, who, as in Spectator 5, characterized modern English writers as the true progeny of the Ancients. “[I]f we look into the Writings of the old Italians, such as Cicero and Virgil,” Addison states, “we shall find that the English Writers, in their way of thinking and expressing themselves, resemble those Authors much more than the modern Italians pretend to do.”¹⁶ Even more explicitly, the modern English writers were thought to be part of the proper lineage of pastoral poets: pastoral began with Theocritus, was followed by Virgil, then Spenser, and finally culminated in Pope and Philips’ writings. Philips states this manifesto indirectly in the Preface to his pastorals,¹⁷ and Thomas Tickell seconds this opinion in Guardian 30: Theocritus “left his Dominions to Virgil, Virgil left his to his Son Spencer, and Spencer was succeeded by his eldest-born Philips.”¹⁸ Philips and Tickell’s omission of any Italian Renaissance intermediaries, most notably Tasso and Guarini, is not an accident. The artifice of the Italian poets was considered contrary to both the Rational and Neoclassic pastoral theories.

Not only did English Neoclassic and Rational pastoral theory dictate that pastorals should be modernized and cast off the artifice of the late Renaissance and early Baroque Italian poets, but that England was an appropriate and desirable location for pastoral. The Italian pastoral operas performed in London during this time did not conform to any of these precepts. Gli amori di Ergasto (1705), The Temple of Love (1706), Love’s Triumph (1708), Il pastor fido (1712), and Dorinda (1712), are all either written and set by Italians, or are translated reproductions of original Italian works. All five of these Italian pastoral operas contain Italianate shepherds, and were set in a traditional Italianate Arcadia. In the eyes of the Addisonians, these Italian pastorals posed several threats. Not only was a foreign art form impinging on an English one and a foreign environment being promoted as more idyllic than their native England, the traditional English pastoral genre was being threatened by a foreign pastoral genre with foreign traditions, and by what was perceived as poor pastoral poetry.

For the Addisonians, there was more than just English culture at stake; pastoral was also connected to political issues. With such country-house poems as To Penshurst, Ben Jonson instigated a shift in function of the English Arcadia in the seventeenth century that culminated in works such as Pope’s Windsor Forest. Not only was British soil considered a legitimate setting for Arcadia, but Arcadia was located in the present, country estates of the Nobility.¹⁹ The meanings inherent in this equivocation are numerous: describing country estates as Arcadian environments served to praise the patron for his rightful dominion over nature, where nature yielded its bounty to the (supposedly) deserving estate owner. It also reinforced the perceived natural order of the upper class’ rule over the lower classes.

Country-house poems were not the only medium equating country estates with the pastoral environment. Owners and visitors alike would often describe country estates as idyllic retreats. In the reverend Thomas Creech’s Dedication to his translation of René Rapin’s Discourse on Pastorals, Creech compares and describes Arthur Chalet’s country estate as a pastoral retreat away from the demands of city life:

You may remember, Sir, how often, when the publick Cares of Your well-managed Office would permit You to retreat, we have retir'd to a Grove, where Quiet spreads all around, and a springing Verdure, and chequer'd Variety to raise the Thoughts, and recreate the Fancy; whilst soft Breezes murmur'd thro' the trees, which, like our Affections, serv'd only to intermix, but never to shatter or disturb: There I have enjoy'd whatever the Poets could imagine, a free, innocent; and instructive Discourse, such as reform'd my Errors, and encourag'd those Essays which you was pleas'd to think endeavours after Virtue; till then I envied the Happiness of the described Swains, and look'd on Virgil and Theocritus as Disturbers of Mankind … The Golden Age was their Scene, and 'twas necessary to look beyond Jupiter himself to find any thing innocent or pleasing, and how tedious such a Search must be, every one may imagine, who considers that 'tis very hard to take so large a Prospect, especially when there is nothing but a bare Contemplation to excite, and reward his Diligence.²⁰

As Creech emphasizes, a country estate’s landscaped garden design was equated with a pastoral retreat. It evinced an atmosphere conducive to the patron’s relaxation, where he could escape the demands of daily city life in favour of enjoying the aesthetic space in a variety of ways. In this manner, an estate owner who is perceived to live a relaxed and recreational lifestyle in harmony with his so-called “natural” surroundings where nature rightfully provides for his every need is the metaphorical shepherd promoted in pastoral literature.

As in the country-house poems begun with Jonson, social, economic, and political factors play themselves out in the garden as well. The size, the quality of the design, the use of very particular features such as waterworks, statues, embroidery parterres, etc., all designated the patron as belonging to a specific class, having a financial pocket of a certain depth, and promoted the owners’ perceived control over “nature” and the lower classes who maintained it. This hierarchal relationship is further reflected through the landscape styles in fashion at the turn of the eighteenth century. The English landscape gardens were still predominantly influenced by foreign designs – particularly French, Italian, and Dutch – themselves modeled on garden designs from classical antiquity.²¹ According to Addison, the regularity and formality of the landscape gardens modeled on foreign styles was, as Michel Baridon summarizes, “quite in keeping with the despotism of the Sun-King. To be in favour of asymmetry and irregularity was to declare oneself a friend to civil liberty and a partisan of the mixed constitution.”²² Addison ridiculed the extent of this foreign influence, just as he ridiculed Italian opera. In a Spectator from June, 1712, Addison states,

Our British Gardeners, … instead of humouring Nature, love to deviate from it as much as possible. Our Trees rise in Cones, Globes, and Pyramids. We see the Marks of the Scissars upon every Plant and Bush. I do not know whether I am singular in my Opinion, but, for my own part, I would rather look upon a Tree in all its Luxuriancy and Diffusion of Boughs and Branches, than when it is thus cut and trimmed into a Mathematical Figure; and cannot but fancy that an Orchard in Flower looks infinitely more delightful, than all the little Labyrinths of the [more] finished Parterre.²³

Addison and his colleagues preferred a more naturalized landscape garden, where the extensive pruning and shaping of plants and gardens, characteristic of the previous era, was balanced with a more natural approach, setting the landscape garden in greater harmony with its surrounding.

The fact that those who could afford to landscape their country retreats at the turn of the century – aristocracy and nouveau riche alike – still did so in imitation of foreign and older styles, was yet another example of fellow Englishmen putting foreign values over what the Addisonians perceived to be proper English values. Moreover, as the owners were considered metaphorical “shepherds” within their landscaped pastoral environments, the portrayal of them as shepherds through literature, sketches, and paintings was a blatant promotion of their right to exploit the land and rule over those of lesser status, in imitation of foreign despotism.

As Addison and Steele were undoubtedly aware, owning these pastoral oases was not simply a benign expression of wealth, status and socio-political views; the threat of this landscape imagery was based on a very literal expression of political power. Agriculture was the primary source of employment and wealth in England in the early eighteenth century,²⁴ and owning land allowed for a substantial income based on various forms of land exploitation. With this financial viability and responsibility came political power. In 1696, the first of the Land Qualification Bills was pushed through the House of Commons, which required every Member of Parliament to have substantial landed property as a condition of taking his seat. Although the bill initially failed through Whig opposition in the House of Lords, the Tory government finally achieved this goal after their landslide election in 1710, when they passed a bill requiring one to have significant property-generated income in order to get elected: £600 p.a. if they wished to contest a county seat, and £300 p.a. if they wished to stand for a borough.²⁵

In essence, land equals power. And if land equals power, and pastoral equals the landscape garden, then the type of pastoral environment represented in the landscape design is a reflection of the symbolic basis of power of the landowner. The rich and powerful “shepherd” who owns the landscape, fashions it to support his right to rule. Those who designed or maintained their country estate landscapes in imitation of the foreign Renaissance gardens were perceived by the Addisonians to support despotism, in the case of French antecedents, and Papacy, for those imitating the Italians, whereas those who used a more natural style of garden design were considered friends of civil liberty. As the socio-political views expressed through the landscape gardens were not benign, but intentional and outward manifestations of the personal views of those with power, the very existence of foreign-influenced landscape gardens posed a significant threat to what the Addisonians believed were proper English patriotic values. Since pastoral in England was equated with the English environment, the pastoral genre symbolically represented an outward manifestation of political power, where the cultural views imbued in the poetry reflected the patron as being either a friend of despotism, or a friend to civil liberty. The choice of the fashionable elite to support Italian pastoral opera over traditional English plays, then, was perceived by the Addisonians as tantamount to their choosing despotism over civil liberty.

To summarize, the production of Italian operas on the English stage was perceived by the Addisonians as damaging the English stage and poetic traditions, as negatively affecting the opera-going English audience’s constitution, making them irrational, possibly “inclined to thoughts of peace,” and slaves to ridiculous foreign entertainments. To these foes, Italian opera’s appearance on the English stage was another facet of some of the elite and nouveau riche’s interest in all things foreign over all things English. That some of these Italian operas were pastorals added insult to the injury; they were perceived to be degrading the English pastoral literary tradition through the poor quality of their poetry, and promoted the Italian pastoral genre over the English one. Moreover, as pastoral in England was directly associated with country estates, to associate Italian pastoral opera with the seats of British political and financial power was thus perceived to be a threat of the fashionable elite imposing despotism and papacy over the civil liberties of those of lesser status. Worst of all, their fellow Englishmen promoted these values. While the degree to which this very goal was intended undoubtedly varies, that it did exist is evidenced by the Addisonians’ published criticisms, which used ridicule to bring the straying fashions and values of the fashionable elite into line with the rest of English culture. When Italian pastoral opera was produced on the English stage, then, it was more than another example of a foreign culture impinging upon English culture at the request of the fashionable elite; it promoted the elite’s continuing dominance and political power.

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